While looking a bit at the website for Freedom Friends Church, I came across an online forum, in which there is listed the topic "Quakerism 101."
How could I resist...?!
Many of the posts there are written by pastor and blogger Peggy Senger Parsons, but the post about using the peach pit as a metaphor for growing the Divine Seed within us caught my eye.
Though the seed is not a new metaphor among modern Friends, after I finished reading the peach pit entry, I found I was left with two questions:
What sort of spiritual climate would I say I need to cultivate and nurture the Divine Seed in me so it may ultimately bloom, produce new fruit, and provide new seeds?Blessings,
How can I help create a spiritual climate that would in turn help cultivate and nurture the Divine Seed in those around me?
Liz
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1 comment:
Yes, I loved that image, too. A mustard seen would have worked just as well, but not maybe from the front of the meetingroom.
I especially like the perspective of the Seed being perfectly what it is, but not all that it is intended to be. I've been reading more about how Friends have viewed the process of sanctification -- becoming holy, as a response to the infusion of the Spirit.
As I am tentatively grasping it, the revivalist-type evangelical view is that it happens all at once, in a flash, with the infusion of the Holy Spirit at the time of conversion. Hannah & Joel Bean objected to this view when revivalism arrived in Iowa, holding instead the traditional Quaker position that sanctification is a life-long process. It begis with the initial transformative experience of being convinced -- literally, conquered with, or by -- the Light, but followed by growth and struggle and periods of dryness. One steadily comes into fruition through faithful, steady attention to the Light. (John Punshon's Reasons for Hope explains this especially well, I think.)
The organic metaphor of the Seed therefore is an apt description of this process.
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